What will happen to hermeneutics with the rise of AI? Life depends of interpretation. As we put the chatbots into our life, will life be same to us humans? They will assist us to deal with our daily existential concerns. Hence, they will cross our emotional, social and spiritual senses of meaningfulness. We may at time over estimate the appropriateness of their responses even when they seem to offer relevant or less information. Hence, the challenge of living with Ai chatbots is huge. Besides, there is a question of theft of our privacy. This is because it is suspected that the chatbots pass our information to the service providers.
We have to factor the limitations of a chatbot as it all depends the way it is trained to reflect data. It also depends on the manner we prompt the chatbot to perform a task. Hence, the information that chatbot provides is already biased and as such is given to us as a result of hermeneutical operation. This operation is machinic and is a bit complex. The hermeneutical circle is operated both by humans and the machines in this context. Although information that we get through ai chatbots is already hermeneutical or interpreted, it may tend to be somewhat predictable and not creative as it is the case when it is purely done by the humans. Of course, as ai undergoes machine learning, this predictability will slowly be on the rescinding side. Yet there are fears that these intelligent chatbot will fail to understand the world and its complexities as experienced by humans.
We will athropomorphize chatbots and think that their responses may index the way we respond to complex situations in life. This formalizing responses will take away something deeply human and we will be in danger of being induced to put out mindless robotic responses to several human situations. It also means that we will not be able to endure such forced machinic mindless responses for long. This situation may unleash more mental sickness. This is because we humans have an arrow of meaning. It gives us meaning and purpose to our life. When we work to fulfill that purpose , we fell content and satisfied. If the arrow of meaning is outsourced to ai how can we feel human? At best we can take help from ai to achieve the purpose that we set for life. But this not so simple , the arrow of life discovered all at once. Its discovery is a long drawn hermeneutical process and it often revised and even abandoned for all together new one in a dynamic way. These complexities of human life are cannot be easily integrated with ai chatbots.
How we allow meaning in our lives , churn values and pursue them through our actions is profoundly hermeneutical. This is not possible without thought and self-reflection and hence, out sourcing these human abilities will take away the das ding of humanness out us. Indeed, things will even become worse to us because of our dependence on narrative weaving of our life. We are storying our life. Our actions and values are constituted by a larger narrative that gives us the meaning of life. This means the arrow of human meaning of life is very central to us without which we will simply wither away.
Humans need a worldview. This worldview is multidimensional and complex. Ai chatbots work with linear and parallel patterns. Ai logic is sequential. Ai chatbots are efficient and quick but they do lack the human way of processing life. The arrow of life that is nurtured by hermeneutics enables us to look back and look ahead. We are introspective and prospective. Our introspection and prospection often provides us practical wisdom to act in our living present. It is indeed difficult to assess the direction given by chatbots and deem it as wisdom. It is human experience of life that enables us to view something as wisdom. Wisdom requires the churning of the years. A chatbot may provide us direction to put forth the best or efficient action. It cannot guide us to put forth wise action. Wisdom is the strength of humans and machine cannot rise to it. Wisdom is born of slow long process of hermeneutics that matures over the years.
Ai working on large language models is statistical and works with smart anticipations and correlations. Hence, although ai is already hermeneutical, it is at the lowest level and cannot match the complexities that humans are capable as hermeneutical beings. Ai does mimic human skills especially human language skill. But it falls short when we interface it with hermeneutics. Humans are hermeneutical beings and not simply linguistic beings. It is hermeneutics that reveals that Ai cannot mimic humans. Ai can simply come to a semblance of some human skills but remains at the distance from being human. Total dependence on ai chatbots will imprison us into a technologically framed matrix and we shall miss the human matrix that is so vital for our life and being. It is hermeneutics that keeps us human and hence, blind surrender to a techno-matrix framed by ai is dangerous. Technology is only a good servant but a bad master. Technological dependence actually incapacitate us. Hence, we cannot lose our hermeneutical capacity to ai chatbots. Let us remain consciously human as we use ai chatbot as we chase efficiency and speed today.
